“You are an encyclopaedia,” said Lady Phayre, laughing. “You know everything.”
“Did you like the article?”
“Immensely. I detached it from the review, and restitched it with blue ribbon to use as a text-book. Without it I might have been led to destruction by Hendrick.”
“Ah, my dear Lady Phayre—I shall not tell it in Gath; but when are you going to have views of your own?”
“Views? Of course I have views,” said Lady Phayre, comfortably reversing the crossing of her feet, “just like everybody else, only theirs are fixed and mine are—dissolving. It gives greater variety to life. But I think the Goddard view will be lasting.”
“I shall tell him. He will be flattered.”
“Oh, you know him?”
“Pretty intimately. I may say that I trained him—in the sporting, not the pedagogic sense.”
“You never told me. Have you many more lights under your bushel?”
“A dazzling illumination of unsuspected virtues. But I didn’t do very much for Goddard except put him in the way of things; and he would have come to the front right enough without me. He is the coming man of the younger school of Progressists. The anomaly of his generation—a hot reformer with luminous common-sense—a popular demagogue with an idea of proportion—an original thinker—a powerful, eloquent speaker. Look at the work he has done on the Council, the Progressive League—ramifications spreading all over the country with organised courses of lectures on civism, social economics, and what not. Decidedly the coming man.”